Blood Moon
by April29Roses
Summary: The Blood Moon rises over Camelot. In the eldritch shadows of the eclipse, Arthur awakens from a nightmare only to find it has become reality.


"Merlin!"

The words tore from Arthur's lips with a strangled gasp as he surged awake. The dream clung to him and filled him with dread.

Guinevere slept. Her warmth radiated comfort, but somehow Arthur needed to move. Something terrible was afoot. His nightmare unease grew into a thundering miasma, evil thoughts like strands, lingering on his mind as he struggled to awaken. The chamber was flooded with an uneasy light. It was not the clear silver of moonlight, but gray and turgid, the shadows were strange and dim.

Still breathing fast and unashamed, here in his solitude, Arthur could not calm as the moments passed. He moved quietly out of the bed, leaving Guinevere, fearing to wake her. Dressing quickly, he left his shoes behind as the dread he felt, began to surge deeper into his awareness. The shadows made even his familiar chamber seem strange and it slowed him down.

As he walked through the halls, the dim moonlight deepened his dread. In the shadows, he remembered that Merlin had grown unusually quiet as the day had ended. He had stumbled as he had turned to leave the king's chamber and had steadied himself on the post of the bed, and Arthur had laughed. So had Merlin. It had hardly had seemed worthy of note at the time, but for some reason, Arthur recalled Merlin's eyes. His enigmatic, silent look. The look that came more frequently to his friend's eyes than Arthur wanted to remember. The nightmare that had awoke him settled deeper into the eldritch shadows of the corridors and hallways of Camelot. He chided himself for acting like a child, but he only walked faster, as he remonstrated himself for his foolishness. By the time he arrived at Gaius' chambers he did not pause to knock, the feeling of apprehension gripped him so tightly.

But even with the strange forewarning of his dream, he was not prepared for what he saw when he opened the door the the old physician's chambers. Merlin was lying on his side, on a hard cot near the window, and Gaius hunched over in deep concern, by his side. The night was almost done; the moon was low in the sky. It shone a disturbing red, bronze as dried blood, glowing and unholy against the dark of night. It filled the chamber with strange incomprehensible colors and even the candlelight seemed garish and weak against the terrible moonlight. Merlin was breathing too fast. He was moving weakly, almost uncontrollably, twitching and gasping. He was murmuring, his voice cracked and agonized, and Gaius was trying to calm him. No blanket covered his thin form, and his pale threadbare nightshirt clung to him damply. Stunned, his heart ripped open, Arthur cried out in fear and shock.

"Merlin!"

_Yes, that was my name. My name was Merlin. Once, long ago, it was my name in the morning of my youth. When I walked in the light, when I thought that destiny could never alter who or what I was, when I thought it could never change what I believed was true. When I walked at Arthur's side._

_The years have passed. So many years, so many springs and winters and brief, brilliant summers, that I forget who I am for decades at a time. It hardly matters. Every schoolchild in the blazing, cynical world of today knows the name of Merlin. The image of the great magician, the charlatan, the poet, the doddering old wizard, are no more real than tales the computers tell to the dreamers of this age. Each generation remakes Arthur to it's own need, in the image it needs to justify or glorify it's ideals or its wars. That thought alone took me lifetimes to understand, and now in daily despair, I see the dreams I treasured have become my nightmares. My own heart does not change. It cannot change, for my deepest need is the very destiny that steals all hope from my dreams. Because I am Merlin and I wait. _

_I wait, silent as the spirits of the trees, hoping to catch a moment in the storm of time, hoping always to find my king, my friend, Arthur. _

_Here in the graylands of my exile, I wait._

The old man did not look up as Arthur approached. And as he came closer, Arthur saw why. Merlin was seriously ill, heat was radiating from him, and he appeared unconscious and delirious. He was shivering and twitching so hard, that Arthur began to suspect he was on the edge of going into seizures. He was talking and struggling, as if his fever was almost unbearable. Gaius was sponging him, trying vainly to bring his temperature down.

"What...", began Arthur. Fear clamped like fist around his heart.

"I do not know", came Gaius strained reply. "We started to watch the eclipse. You know how fascinated he has been with the calculations and predictions about this eclipse."

Arthur recalled with a pang, how Merlin had recently spent hours reassuring the villagers and the farm folk, that the eclipse would not bring them any harm. He reasoned that information would calm the people's fears. It was a natural process, Merlin had insisted. Science could explain itself completely and it had nothing to do with curses or magic. He had laughed almost uncontrollably as he told Arthur about an old woman who insisted the eclipse was caused by a dragon eating the moon. He gave detailed explanations to anyone who would listen about the impending phenomenon, with an orange as the sun, a walnut as the moon, and the earth somewhere in the middle. Mostly no one understood, but their fears had eased. Yes, Arthur remembered all of this.

"He complained of headache and a fever, but once he rested, he seemed to rally. He was under the weather earlier today, but he didn't want you to know. A minor annoyance, he told me." Gaius was almost rambling, even though his hands never ceased to soothe and stroke Merlin. The boy shivered and shook under his ministrations.

To Arthur's horror, he noted how deeply sunken his friend's eyes had become; his lips were parched and cracked as if the fever had been eating him from within for days, instead of hours.

"But he fell asleep just as the eclipse reached totality and I thought he might get better, but he awoke only a minutes later. His fever worsened and he hasn't recognized me since." he paused once again painfully. "Sire..."

The old man finally raised his eyes to the King's To his shock, Gaius' eyes were red and swollen. The silence hung between them like a veil, and the blood red moon filled the background of the nightmare words that followed.

"I don't know how much longer Merlin can hold on, Arthur." The King stopped breathing but the old man went on. "His strength is fading." The old man swallowed. "The fever is draining him, but it's almost as if Merlin has given up, he can't bear to go on, as if he no longer wants to live..." Tears filled Gaius' eyes suddenly. "I can explain no more, my Lord; he is caught in some nightmare...You will hear, Sire. Perhaps it is a mercy that you are here. Maybe..." He bowed his head. As he dipped a towel into the water again, he dropped it in clumsily into the bucket as he reached up to prevent Arthur from covering his servant with a blanket.

"Any more warmth and he will seize," said the physician sadly. "I know it seems cruel Sire, but I have few tools at my disposal,.."

Arthur had to look away. He had never heard despair in the old physician's voice as he heard it at this moment. His own heart began to drown in a tide of fear.

_The idea was madness from the beginning. I hardly knew how and where it began; whether it had it's birth in my dreams under the swaying sweet dance of the absinthe or if it had its root in the dark visions I endured in the crystal cave, visions of my own madness that now possessed me. I only knew I had grown hard and wild, my grief like a prison that grew ever stronger as the years sped by, undeniable as the events of Camlann itself. I grew ever more dispassionate and withdrawn. There were fewer nights when I held on to hope and more nights when loss ruled my darkness._

_Nights when I heard Arthur's final words once again. Nights when my looping memories of his death played out in endless repetition until I begged for whatever gods ruled my fate to grant me silence. Nights when I prayed for his return and nights I cursed every memory I had of the arrogant prat. My king. My friend._

_I tasted the lure of necromancy long ago. I fostered those dark poisons within me, and I pondered such schemes. I found only emptiness. There was no comfort down that road, for despite the lure of remembered tones, of a music still echoing, necromancy is nothing more than illusion. And lonliness._

_I learned the art of possessing the will of another. Of how to bend and warp, finding the tiniest of cracks in the armor of the most mighty. But there was no satisfaction in such a triumph, and when a slave bends to a whip, it is the master who pays the price in the wounding of his soul. and sets in motion it's own retribution. And yet I learned. And I waited. _

_I learned that magic was more wonderful and more terrible than anything I dared to dream in the green forests of my youth. I learned there were times of impenetrable finality. I took the darkness as my own element. I explored moments, and the turnings of the spirit, and I grew to know the corridors of time between the seasons of my life. I found those places where the veils between the worlds grew thin. In the darkness of my heart, as I suffered through my long exile from Arthur's side, an idea began to form. The thought possessed me and I grew to serve it. I bound my magic to such dark threads as served that need and I plotted to seize a moment from myself. Only one moment ,I reasoned to myself. Surely I could steal from myself one moment , just one moment, from the center of my own life. For my heart could go on no longer. _

_No longer._

Merlin was whispering his name.

"Arthur... Arthur. "

"I'm here, Merlin," the king said softly, reaching down to touch his servant's shoulder. But his friend only moaned and a tear slid down from his closed eyes, as he tossed his head from side to side. He was murmuring as he writhed, his words broken, but clear enough to understand.

"You've been gone so long, " his servant gasped out. "So long. I can't even remember you. I try... but I can't...I can't remember your face...Sometimes... I think... Arthur" The sound of Merlin's evident turmoil went through his heart like keenest of blades.

""Arthur ,please," he pleaded again. "Can you hear me?" Merlin's voice caught in his throat and he gasped again, wheezing as he struggled for another sobbing breath.

"I'm here, you clotpole. I'm here," the king repeated. Merlin's lack of awareness and response frightened him more than he could say. He trailed his hand through Merlin's hair. He was burning.

"How could you die and leave me here? How could you go...where I can't follow? I tried. I tried." His voice faded into exhaustion, but the fever was inexorable. It goaded him on. "A thousand lifetimes..."

"Easy, Merlin," Arthur soothed as the old physician wordlessly handed him a cup. He slid his hand below Merlin's head and carefully lifted, hoping he would rouse enough to drink. He could see his friend was trying to open his eyes. The king wet Merlin's cracked lips with the cool water, but he couldn't swallow and the water drained from the side of his mouth.

"Arthur..." There was desperation and hopelessness in his voice as he called for his king. His eyes opened at last, but they were unfocused, bright with fever. He kept on pleading with Arthur as if he wasn't there. "I can't keep going ..." He panted, his eyes going wider. There was something unfamiliar in his face, a terrible weight, a darkness that Arthur could not recognize. It was as if someone else spoke through him and yet the person who spoke was Merlin. The feeling of unease grew as the king continued to try and rouse his friend.

"Please forgive me." Merlin whispered. " Arthur, please... please... forgive me... I failed you." The agony in Merlin's heart caught at him, drawing him into the tide of pain and despair that tossed his friend in his fever dreams. Merlin continued to murmur, his voice catching as he turned and twisted.

"Wars and killing... rivers of blood... oceans of corpses..." He drew a trembling breath, "Ever since Camlann," Merlin fairly sobbed out the name, his eyes sliding over Arthur's, uncomprehending, blind and deaf to the fact that he spoke to very person with whom he was pleading. "Since Camlann...always, the endless dead, but never me...never me..."

Merlin's strange words clung to him like the dream. The turgid strange shadows sucked everything familiar from the scene. The moon filled the chamber with it's fey light.

_In the darkness, I balanced my power. I, who had once been Merlin, now stood at the fulcrum of the worlds. Balanced against the eclipse and it's shadow and the rising of the sun, the blood moon dominated my landscape. The scent of the sea came to me. The song of the night insects swelled in the strange light and birds murmured in the trees. The sun and the moon were impossibly present in the sky for a brief while because of the refraction of light and power. _

_Between the worlds of time I fled, focusing my power of possession on the one soul I knew better than any other. The one soul that I knew would forgive my unforgivable sin of possessing his body. I plunged into the heart of my own youth, crossing my own lifetime, weakening my physical bodies in both the past and the present, all for the mad dream that I hardly could acknowledge. _

_My younger self writhed in a fever, his thoughts confused , Caught in an inundation, helplessly swept away by the opening of the veils of time, I fell into my own trap, I surrendered to my own desperation. The darkness of my long exile flooded through me. The apin of Arthur's death propelled me through the years. By the light of the bronze and arcane moon, I thought I glimpsed Arthur. In my dream his voice was soft and he called my name._

_I saw Arthur._

The king felt shuddering gasps wrack Merlin's body as the fever continued to torture him. Even as he watched, he saw his friend stiffen, the right side of his body suddenly trembling with a hard clenching, atavistic shaking. His breath suddenly started to come very harshly, as if he could not draw breath. He struggled for air,and his lips turned visibly darker, even in the scarlet shadows cast by the moon. A trickle of bubbling foam leaked from his stiffened lips. The shaking ceased after a long minute,as suddenly as it had begun, leaving Merlin unmoving. He lay limp on the pillows, his mouth half open. The smell of urine frightened Arthur even further and he wasn't sure that Merlin was breathing any more. His eyes had slid open, a strange pale blue that struck at Arthur like the edge of a bandit's knife. The word tore from Arthur's lips with a strangled gasp, just as they had when he awakened from his nightmare.

"Merlin!"

_The dim moonlight shone on Arthur's pale hair. He was looking away from me, almost as if he wept. I tried to move, but the drain on our magic had taken all my strength. As if he heard me anyway, he raised his head to look at me. He called my name._

_He called my name. Merlin. I was no longer the boy to whom he called. I was now another. Grown old, I moved like a shadow through the chain of years. My desperate soul was unrecognizable as the boy I had been. In those days I had only been a liar, now I was something else, something more terrible than the noble soul of Arthur could ever accept or understand. Grown old and changed forever, ashamed as I was of my shadow life; I no longer cared._

_I looked into Arthur's eyes and felt his living presence. He was more vital and strong than my fading image of him, more beautiful than I remembered and not as perfect. Fear and hope battled in his gaze. I could hear Gaius weeping. It was terrible and it was beautiful. Achingly, wonderfully, horrifically beautiful. I was home._

Arthur could not believe what he was seeing. Merlin was looking at him. Calmly, quietly, as if he had just not suffered a frightening seizure and stopped breathing. As if the fever that was killing him, mattered not at all. Arthur could still feel the heat of the fever flooding from Merlin's body in waves.

"Merlin," he said softly, trying to smile in an encouraging way, gently reaching down to touch Merlin's hair. A silent moment deepened. His gesture of careless affection, turned swiftly into a hug. All pretense forgotten, he suddenly swept his friend up in an embrace, lifting him from the pillows.

"Merlin! I thought I had lost you."

The eyes that met his own were Merlin's eyes, but they were far older, far more deep than he remembered. He felt again the sensation that he was talking to someone else, but the person was still Merlin. The king wiped haphazardly at his eyes with the back of his hand, like a boy.

"Won't ever leave you", the servant said slowly. His eyes were bright as he looked as he gazed at Arthur and then at Gaius. In his pale face, Arthur could see only joy, even though the fever had not abated. He wondered with fear, if this moment of lucidity, was Merlin's last rally."Won't ever leave." Merlin repeated, as if he knew what was in Arthur's heart.

"Then stay," said the king gruffly. "Hang on, Merlin. Just hang on, I won't let you go either." He took his friend's hand and the boy took a surprised breath as if he could not believe what he was hearing. The servant was so weak, he could only smile faintly, but joy touched his blue eyes like lightning. There was no denying the flood of loving emotion that swept from Arthur's words.

"I'm sorry." Merlin's voice failed him, but his lips formed the words. He tried again. but there was now there was no hint of farewell in his tone, only sincere sorrow. "Forgive me, Arthur," he said once again, his gaze fixing on his king once again. "Let me go now," he whispered, his strength fading. His eyes slipped shut and he began to tremble again, "I promise, " he murmured, "All will be well."

It was quiet for a long moment, the only motion the faint rise and fall of Merlin's chest. The shadows from the moon grew brighter, the dim strange colors transforming and easing into the familiar silver of the moon. It brightened the room as the bronze moonlight began to fade. The sun was close to rising and as the king held his breath, the golden light of morning filled the room.

The old physician reached out and felt his ward's forehead. Smiling at once, he clapped the king on his shoulder.

"The fever is broken, Arthur."

Relief ran giddy through both men and they smiled at each other like idiots.

_My name is Merlin. Once, long ago, it was my name in the morning of my youth. It was my name when I walked in the light, when I thought that destiny could never alter who or what I was. When I walked at Arthur's side. _

_In darkness and despair, I lost my way. The years ate at my soul and clawed at my memory. I surrendered to my fear and my doubt; the burden of my years alone grew too great for my heart to bear. But now I see, every link of the chain that binds me to time, is forged by a deeper fire than my lost mortality, or my forgotten youth. Each link of my binding is forged by my love and Arthur's trust in me. _

_I wait, for I can do no other than believe that our time will come. Hope is a frail thing, but I find, here in the shining light of my exile from my king, that I know no fear. I wait, silent as the spirits of the trees, hoping to catch a moment in the storm of time, hoping always to find my destiny again. Hoping to find my friend, Arthur. _

_My name is Merlin. _

"**Time held me green and dying,Though I sang in my chains, like the sea." Dylan Thomas**


End file.
